Head in the Clouds

That hard drive in your PC. Kiss it goodbye. Not due to a virus or dropping it on the kitchen floor, but because you won't need it anymore as we will soon all access the same big hard drive in the sky, better known as the Internet.

The concept of "cloud computing," where we will be able to access our data regardless of where we are or what device we use (early examples being Yahoo!, Gmail or AOL e-mail), is one of the top digital trends the marketing gurus at Google are envisioning for the future, according to its Midwest Director Jim Lecinski.

"The world is moving in this direction," Lecinski told a sold-out October luncheon of executives and creative professionals from the American Advertising Federation – Cleveland. "Many say the next version of Microsoft's operating system will be the last one released in a CD package form because from now on the stuff will just live in the cloud."

Other trends Lecinski mentioned, mostly geared toward the advertising and marketing bias of the crowd, include the readiness to capitalize on popular current news events that boost Web site traffic and engagement. Lecinski offered the example of the huge influx of Google searches about dark chocolate earlier this year after a scientific study ruled it to be healthy. Savvy candymakers jumped on the event too with Web ads and features on their home pages.

"Be ready online for what's happening offline," he said.

In the still evolving world of online advertising, bigger isn't always better. Lecinski and Google revealed that 55 percent of banner ads are located on the big portal sites like Yahoo!, MySpace, MSN and AOL, but only 23 percent of Web traffic goes there.

"There's a good amount of value in specialty niche sites," he said. "As you get into more specialty content on your site, your users' engagement increases."